Friday, October 21, 2005

Devotees of Sufi saint went in a procession from the dargah on Madurai Road in Tiruchi to the Cauvery Water stored in jars, believed to have healing properties, is given as `holy water'

TIRUCHI: Shortly after midnight, descendants and devotees of Sufi saint Hazrath Thable Alam Badhusha Natharvali went in a procession from the dargah on Madurai Road in Tiruchi to the Cauvery, carrying new empty mud pots.

In the wee hours of Wednesday, they took a dip in the river and returned to the dargah with pots full of water, with which they washed the four tombs of Hazrath Nathervali and other Sufi saints there. Without letting the water spill on the floor, they carefully collected the water flowing down the tombs in glass jars. The water stored in the jars, believed to have healing properties, is given as `holy water' in small doses to the people beset with illness.

A highlight of this ritual is that the water in the glass jars, which the devotees adore, retains its freshness throughout the year even when kept at room temperature. The remaining water of the previous year is poured on plants and trees to nourish them. The earthen pots are used to store cereals.

This ritual termed, `Thurbat', undertaken on the eve of the 1008th `Sandanakoodu', dates back to 10 centuries.

Says Syed Ishaq Khalander Hussaini Suharwardy, a Khalifa (descendant): "Devotees of the Sufi saint in Tiruchi have been continuing the practice without any let-up from time immemorial. The reverential river has always been a part and parcel of our traditional practice."

Abundant water this year has facilitated devotees to undertake a full exercise of the ritual.

Monday, October 17, 2005

"Sufism is the soul of Kashmiriyat and it is this which makes Kashmir unique in the world", Jammu and Kashmir Governor Lt. Gen (retd) S K Sinha has said.

Inaugurating the Lal Ded festival organised by the Sahitya Academy last evening at the SKICC, the Governor said that "great Sufis and saints have preached love and peace which have transcended the boundaries and barriers of the Valley, spreading light in the world." General Sinha said poetry and music elevated humanity to the highest pinnacles of spirituality and hoped the great values preached by Sufis and saints will inspire the generations.

Academy secretary Sachidananda threw light on the rich ethos of Kashmiriyat and read out english translations of Lal Ded's poems.

Noted poet Rehman Rahi read a paper on Lal Ded and the evening started with her 'vaakh' by Jameela Khatoon.

The festival is jointly organized by the Sahitya Academy, Academy of art, culture and language and Sopori Academy of music and fine arts.

Dervishes and Sufi singers have long been revered in the West, even as their practices have come under threat across the Islamic world. Peter Culshaw reports on a series of revelatory encounters with different mystics

Sunday October 16, 2005The Observer

It had taken me a week to track down the underground dervish scene in Istanbul - the only dervish contact I had in the city was a carpet-seller called Abdullah deep in the bazaar. As with all quests, the difficulty only added to the sense of occasion when I did manage to locate them. Finally I found myself at a zikr (a remembrance) among 80 or so dervishes in a hidden tekke (religious house), and they began to chant, rhythmically, the name of Allah. It was one of the most powerful sounds I have ever heard. In addition to a weaving violin and a zither that sends chills down your spine, there is a solo voice - similar to the muezzin's call from the minarets - that is full of heartbreaking longing. This is serious blues music, I thought. I was sitting in the middle of the group and, although I had permission to take photographs, I couldn't actually stand - pinned back by the weight of numbers but also by what seemed a spiritual force field.When the tension was close to unbearable, 12 dervishes filed into the adjoining room and, in unison, took off their black cloaks - as if it were a holy fashion show - revealing white robes. Then they started spinning with incredible grace. This angelic whirling is a perfect counterpoint to the earthly chanting. Photographs can't prepare you for the disorienting feeling that the dervishes are defying gravity. It takes months of training for them to defy dizziness.

The dervishes are all Sufis, seekers on the mystical path to God, and are members of different Brotherhoods, chief among them Mevlevis, the school founded by the mystic poet Rumi 700 years ago. If the impression often given in the media is of Muslims as puritan fanatics, followers of this branch (and the words dervish and Sufi are interchangeable) have been responsible for much of the rich Islamic heritage of music, poetry and arts from Persia to Andalucia.

Nearly all the great musicians were Sufi disciples. From the 9th century, Sufi ascetics wandered the Islamic world, attracting followers to their gentle form of mystical Islam (the word Sufi is often thought to have come from suuf - wool - from the woollen garments the holy men wore). The shrines of the Sufi masters have become important places of pilgrimage. Their path is an attempt to transcend the ego and achieve unity with the divine, with the help of a sheikh (also called pir) and of prayer, meditation and, in the case of the whirling dervishes, dancing. Many European writers have been fascinated by Sufism - Richard Burton, the translator of the Kama Sutra, was initiated as a dervish, and Doris Lessing and Ted Hughes shared his interest ('the Sufis are the most sensible collection of people on the planet', Hughes once said).

Like much of Sufism, the performance of the whirling dervishes works on many levels and is charged with symbolism. The funereal black cloak represents a tomb. In casting this off the dervishes discard all worldly ties. They spin with the right arm extended to heaven and the left to the floor - grace is received from Allah and distributed to humanity. The dervishes are meditation in movement, prayer as dance.

Abdullah introduced me to the pir, and I asked him about the zikr. 'The purpose of life is to remember Allah,' he said. 'Every electron and proton is whirling round a nucleus, as the planets whirl round the sun - and all of them are chanting for Allah. Even your heartbeat' - he thumped his chest - 'is chanting All-lah, All-lah.' Then he reached deep into his robes, beamed a huge smile and offered me a sweet.

I became interested in Sufi music at one of the first Womad festivals in the early Eighties. People talk about an artist being a revelation, and that was exactly how it felt when Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan started singing his rhythmic qawwali music. He and his group - singers, harmonium and tabla players - were supposed to play an hour but went on for much longer. We were all supposed to go and catch the headliner - New Order or perhaps the Fall - but no one, as far as I could tell, moved from the tent, the audience transfixed by Nusrat's passion.

Nusrat's family (originally from Afghanistan, a traditional centre of Sufism) have an unbroken tradition of singing qawwali for 600 years, yet you felt, somehow, as if you were plugging into something utterly modern. Nusrat became known world-wide and by the time of his death, aged 49, in 1997, following a record 125 albums, there were plans for a duet with Pavorotti.

Nusrat was devoted to spreading his music and its message of peace. His tour manager, Adam Nayyar, told me that once in Japan, Nusrat spent the entire evening watching TV, concentrating on the commercials. When Nayyar asked what he was doing, he said he figured that the clever Japanese must have worked out the most effective music to reach the maximum number of people in their ads. At the concert the next day, Nayyar spotted melodies from TV ads in Nusrat's improvisations.

After his death, his nephew, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, took over his qawwali group. Although no one could compare to Nusrat, the group remain formidable, and can be seen next month as part of the Barbican Centre's Ramadan Nights, which also features Sufi street singer Sain Zahoor, a more classical Arabic Sufi group, the al-Kindi Ensemble with Sheikh Habboush, and whirling dervishes from Syria. The founder of al-Kindi, Jalaluddin Weiss, is a Frenchman whose fascination with Sufi music has led him to become a leading exponent of the oriental zither (qanun).

The Barbican season coincides with a fascinating Channel 4 documentary. Sufi Soul is presented by writer William Dalrymple and features extraordinary scenes from Pakistan, such as a festival at the shrine of a Sufi saint (Shah Abdul Latif), which evokes a subcontinental Las Vegas.

More impressive still, perhaps, is the transcendental voice of Abida Parveen. She claims that, on a good night, she reaches 'a high level of ecstasy - very close to God'. I've seen people weeping in the aisles at her concerts - and when she played in New York's Central Park scores of people fainted.

Tempting though it is to dismiss Parveen's claims that she can see Sufi saints among the audience, Sufism has a tradition of female mystics, notably the eighth century's Rabia al-Basri, who ran through the streets of Basra in Iraq with a blazing torch in one hand and a container of water in the other. Asked what she was doing, she is reported to have said: 'The water is to extinguish the fires of hell, the torch to set fire to paradise - so no one worships God for fear of hell or greed for Paradise.'

As for the al-Kindi Ensemble, I saw them at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music. Set up in response to 1991's Gulf war, the festival is a courageous and inspiring attempt to bring together differing spiritual traditions. Here you can see everything from gospel to Jewish music, from Indian classical to all kinds of Sufi sounds. It is the brainchild of Sufi scholar Faouzi Skali, who wanted to counter 'the stereotypical view Muslims have of the West and vice versa', and to celebrate the fact that 'the world is not uniform; there's a richness of spiritual traditions it's important to know and preserve. Or we will have a world without soul and that would be terrible.'

It's the kind of sentiment echoed by most students of Sufism, such as Coleman Barks, whose translations of Rumi propelled the 13th century mystic into, bizarrely, becoming the bestselling poet in America in the Nineties (Madonna was a fan). Rumi, insists Barks, 'had followers of different faiths in his lifetime. I see him as someone who kicked free of doctrinal confinement'.

From the beginning, Sufi has been a pluralistic faith. The early ascetics were influenced by the Byzantine Christian desert mystics and even now it has elements of animism and paganism. Once, a businessman sitting next to me on a plane to Tangiers told me his wife's mother had the ability, after going into a music-induced trance, to drink boiling water, and to spit it out again a few seconds later ice cold. His current problem was that his daughter had been put under a spell by a frog. Frogs, he explained, as if discussing VAT, are prone to being possessed by 'devils'. The difficulty was you never knew if it was a good or a bad devil. He probably was translating the word djiin which, through fairy tales of Arabic origin, we know as 'genie' (they are mentioned in the Koran, so are not automatically heretical). Not only frogs, he told me, but cats and dogs must be treated with due respect as they may be djiin in disguise.

A minority of Sufi sects go in for extreme practices while under trance, including lacerating themselves with knives, and eating live scorpions and snakes. Some of these rituals have now been outlawed. The music of the Aissawa sect is fabulously rhythmic, with long horns 'to wake the faithful', literally and figuratively. René Brunel, who wrote about the Aissawa in the 1920s, described his experience of 'the furious tempest of drums and oboes', saying the spectators were 'in the grip of the terrifying staccato music seized by this contagious madness and ecstatic frenzy which none can resist'. The best exponents of this music, like Said Guissi, produce some of the most exciting music in the world.

Sufis have occasionally dispensed with the traditional observances of Islam, such as the haj to Mecca, although most have observed the customary rules. In any case, it is not surprising that Sufis and dervishes have had a tough time in many Islamic countries. When I was in Pakistan, qawwali singer Qari Saaed Chisti was shot, apparently for singing a song about how there are many ways up the mountain to God. There is only one - according to the puritan Islamicists. Strict fundamentalists oppose music in any form as a sensual distraction - the Taliban, of course, banned music in Afghanistan. William Dalrymple puts it in stark terms: 'The real clash of civilisations is not between the West and Islam, it's a clash within Islam between the Sufis, who believe in tolerance, and the intolerance of the fundamentalists.'

Certainly, that's something I've seen in my travels across the Muslim world - from India and Pakistan, to Yemen, Morocco, Senegal, Central Asia and Indonesia. After seeing Abida Parveen in Morocco, I was so impressed I felt impelled to seek her out in her homeland of Pakistan. I flew in on 9 September 2001, spent a couple of days with Abida and then went to a hotel, only to see the Twin Towers collapsing on TV. It wasn't the most sensible time to be in Islamabad. But Parveen and the other Sufi musicians were deeply troubled and prayed for peace.

While travelling in Yemen in search of Sufi music, I was told (by the tourism minister) that I was the only tourist and I should have armed protection. At my hotel, owned by the bin Laden family, Hamas held a press conference celebrating suicide bombers. My guard told me if he hadn't got to like me he would have killed me - this would have guaranteed his passage to Paradise. 'If I go to Paradise I will have an eternity of women, drink, drugs - anything I like,' he confided. My Wahabi guide, Sayeed, tried to tell me that hardly anyone followed Sufism any more. The landscape was littered with Sufi shrines, many now destroyed. But at the town of Seyun, I saw a library full of Sufi poetry and met a music group led by Shukkri Hassan Baraji. Listening to their mix of East African drumming and Swahili and Arabic lyrics, I felt, at least for one night, divisions between cultures melting away.

Back in Istanbul, a city half in Europe and half in Asia, a pivotal point between East and West, an Islamic country with a secular state, I met a Sufi pharmacist, whose library of books was above his shop. He believed that only by going to the core of the truth that we have in common, rather than trusting in the divisive man-made institutions of religion, can there be hope for the future. In Turkey too, Sufism is frowned upon - although in the city of Konya, there are celebrations on the anniversary of Rumi's death every year. This is a state-sanctioned occasion, and it is a stately spectacle with many whirlers and a semi-classical orchestra staged in a basketball stadium in front of coachloads of Japanese tourists. There was none of the passion I'd seen among the Istanbul dervishes.

The pharmacist said Sufis 'tap into the river from which all streams flow' and the West's increasing interest in Sufi music and poetry could be a source of a new understanding between East and West. Walking in the night air along the Bosphorus where the city light scintillated on the water, I envied the dervishes their passion, their longing and their faith. On my way back to my hotel I walked past the devastated British Council, recently bombed by Islamic extremists, and I hoped he was right.

One, two, sufi...

204 --The number of countries in which Sufism is practised

1.3 --The number, in billions, of Muslims worldwide

20 --The percentage of Muslims who class themselves as Sufis

10 --The number of Sufi adherents, in millions, in Turkey

10 --Number of Sufi adherents, in thousands, in Germany

195 --Number of practising Sufis in New Zealand

125 --Number of albums recorded by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

· Ramadam Nights, featuring the al-Kindi Ensemble, is at the Barbican, London EC1 from 4 November. Sufi Soul is on C4 on 6 November at 11.30pm

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Police said yesterday they were investigating if a suicide bomber had detonated a powerful bomb that killed 39 devotees at a Muslim shrine in southwestern Pakistan. The bomb exploded during a memorial to a Sufi saint late Saturday in the remote town of Fatahpur, 300km from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, as worshippers ate their evening meal.

"The death toll has risen to 39 and 16 people are injured, some seriously," director of rural police Akbar Lasi told AFP yesterday.

"Investigators have reached the site of the blast and are collecting evidence," Baluchistan police chief Chaudhry Muhammad Yaqub told AFP.

"We are trying to ascertain whether it was a suicide bombing, because body of a man close to the blast site had been ripped into small pieces," Yaqub said.

He said the blast was caused by a home-made explosive device detonated by a timer.

Officials said no one had claimed responsibility for the attack, which happened at around 10:30 pm (1730 GMT).

It could have been related to sectarian violence plaguing Pakistan's Muslim community or be the work of renegade tribesmen waging a bloody struggle for more jobs, Yaqub said.

It could also have been targeted at the custodian of the shrine, Sadiq Ali Shah, who escaped unhurt, he said.

Shah has been in a dispute with relatives over the custody of the shrine and last year also survived an assassination attempt, Yaqub said.

The blast occurred as between 10,000 and 20,000 people had gathered for an annual pilgrimage at the shrine of saint Cheesal Shah, said Syed Kamil Shah, the brother of the shrine's custodian.

As well as devotees of Sufism -- a semi-mystical branch of Islam that believes music, dance and song are ways of reaching God -- followers of the rival Sunni and Shia sects were at the site with a number of Hindus, Shah said.

Many of them had only just sat down to eat when the bomb went off, witnesses said.

"The food was being handed out amongst the devotees when there was a huge, loud blast," pilgrim Mohammad Midhal told AFP.

"Everyone was wailing, they were covered in blood, staggering around and lifting up people to see if they were injured or even alive.

"It was total chaos because everything was so crowded."

A second, unexploded bomb was found near the shrine shortly after the first device detonated, Mohammad Amin Umrani, the mayor of neighbouring Naseerabad, told AFP. It was removed safely.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Challenges and Opportunities for the Progressive Muslim in North AmericaBy Omid Safi

Bism Allah al-Rahman al-Rahim

In today’s political climate, it is a cliché to begin a discourse on Islam and Muslims with the talk of “crisis.” It is not my intention here to add to that unrelenting assault on Muslims. Instead, I intend to explore the profound challenges and precious opportunity confronting Muslims who self-identify as progressive.

Who are progressive Muslims? Progressive Islam both continues and radically departs from the 150-year-old tradition of liberal Islam, that of figures like Abduh, Afghani, Rida, Shari’ati, and others. Unlike some earlier modernists, progressive Muslims are almost uniformly critical of colonialism, both in its nineteenth-century manifestation and in its current variety. Progressive Muslims develop a critical and nonapologetic “multiple critique” with respect to both Islam and modernity. Also unlike their liberal Muslim forefathers, progressive Muslims represent a broad coalition of female and male Muslim activists and intellectuals. One of the distinguishing features of the progressive Muslim movement as the vanguard of Islamic (post)modernism has been the high level of female participation as well as the move to highlight women’s rights as part of a broader engagement with human rights. Progressives measure their success not in developing new and beatific theologies but rather by the amount of change for good on the ground level that they can produce in Muslim and non-Muslim societies. This movement is noted by a number of themes: striving to realize a just and pluralistic society through critically engaging Islam, a relentless pursuit of social justice, an emphasis on gender equality as a foundation of human rights, a vision of religious and ethnic pluralism, and a methodology of nonviolent resistance.

The Progressive Movement in North America and BeyondIt is vital for us in the North American scene to realize that the majority of those who have engaged in the most meaningful Muslim struggles on behalf of social justice, liberation and gender equality have hitherto lived outside the boundaries of North America, and have in many cases never heard of the (English!) terms “Progressive Muslim,” “progressive Islam,” or the Progressive Muslim Union. There are many important movements in areas of in places like South Africa, Iran, Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere. So I hope that we in the North American scene don’t suffer from our usual myopia of thinking that we stand at the center of the cosmos.

Having said that, I continue to believe that the Muslims in North America have a historic role to play in the articulation of Islam, and that ironically the very excesses of the American Empire and the public withdrawal of many Wahhabis form the public domain post-9/11 have created a fruitful space for progressive Muslims from a host of backgrounds to get together and debate ideas here.

There have already been some important victories, and one should not lose sight of them. One of them is in the area of gender justice. Making misogynist and patriarchal comments in public has become as much of an anathema for Muslims as making illdefined calls for jihad without specifying the methods whereby it is to be undertaken (or not), or against whom. Even in those cases where the mainstream Muslim organizations’ response to issues of gender equality has been insufficiently vague (such as the “Woman Friendly Mosque” guide ), it too is a sign of a move in the right direction. I think it is important to mark these victories, as indeed they benefit all Muslims in our community, regardless of how they self-identify.

And yet I will not be focusing on the successes of the progressive Muslim movement, but on what I feel are the very serious challenges facing us. I write here both as a supporter and a self-critic of this movement, adopting the Qur’anic mandate to stand up for justice in the sight of God first of all against one’s own self and one’s own community. It is some of these same shortcomings that led me to resign from my position as the chair and a co-founder of one such organization, but I remain optimistic that if these challenges are confronted with an open heart, inquiring intellect, and self-critical sincerity, that insha’Allah more good can be done to bring out the socially just and compassionate teachings that do come from the very heart of the Islamic tradition. But deal with the challenges we must.

Confronting the Challenges Facing the Progressive Movement in North America:

1) Transcending antagonistic attitudes towards mainstream Muslim communitiesThere is a substantial difference between being an alternative to the mainstream Muslim community (something I wholeheartedly support) and being consistently antagonistic to the mainstream Muslim community (which I do not). I am very concerned about some of the statements from some of progressive Muslims that repeatedly characterize the mainstream community as Islamist, Salafi, or Wahhabi, etc. In today’s political climate, doing so is putting peoples’ lives, family, property, freedom, and reputation in grave danger. All too often those of us in the progressive community have felt that we must be unrelenting in our critique in order to be effective. Surely one can be capable of nuance without surrendering the mandate of being radical in the cause of justice and truth.My own hope is that we in the progressive movement can be a light to the community, a voice of conscience, a mandate of justice, an example of compassion….some force that through the power of its moral calling will persuade many in our community to do that which is most just, most beautiful, and most compassionate.

2) Struggling against secular tendencies in the progressive movementOne of my ambitious hopes for the progressive movement in North America had been that it would mark a “big tent” space in which Muslims of various persuasions could gather to strive for common projects, some focusing on the interpretations of Islam in the modern world and others working on concrete and grounded social projects. While the openness of that proposal still appeals to me, I have also come to see that in practice it is awfully challenging to pull off this “big tent.” In particular, one is reminded here that just as there are shades and gradations of conservative Muslims, not all Muslims who self-identify as secular are the same. The secular criticism of Edward Said is not the same as the secularism of Marx, or that of modern Europe. For Said, part of this process of “secular criticism” was characterized as follows: “In its suspicion of totalizing concepts, in its discontent with reified objects, in its impatience with guilds, special interests, imperialized fiefdoms, and orthodox habits of mind, criticism is most itself, and if the paradox can be tolerated, most unlike itself at the moment it starts turning into organized dogma.” It is worth exploring whether the term progressive Islam can and has become a dogma in and by itself, and thus ironically unlike itself—as Said suggests. As a loving self-critique, I would suggest that many progressives have become every bit as rigid, authoritarian, and yes, dogmatic as the conservative movements they/we so readily criticize. This represents a moral and philosophical failure of the highest magnitude. Among Muslims today, one also finds a variety of secular tendencies. Some come from a Muslim heritage but who are essentially agnostic in their outlook (often combined with the most anti-religious interpretations of Marxism), whereas others interpret secularism a call to keep the state powers out of the religious game. I have come to realize that in our desire to establish the widest possible ground for the “big tent” in some progressive Muslim organizations, we have left ourselves open to the problem of not having enough of a common ground. At the risk of overstating the obvious, a progressive Muslim movement has to start with at least a minimum commitment of commitment to a tawhidic perspective, the guidance of the Qur’an, and the earnest desire to emulate the Prophetic Sunna. While I will always support those who seek the check the state (whether the US, Israel, Iran, India, etc.) against favoring one religious community over others, I have come to realize that a Marxist interpretation of secularism with its hostility towards Islam as a source of inspiration presents one of the greatest sources of damage to the progressive Muslim movement. This damage is all the more pernicious as so many progressives readily identify with the Marxists’ devastating critique of socioeconomic class issues, colonialism, etc. Yet this potential ally is suffocating the spirit of progressive Islam.

3) Engagement with the multiple intellectual and spiritual traditions of IslamIt is not only to outside critics that progressives have too often seemed “insufficiently Muslim.” I think there has been an unfortunate and unnecessary hostility among some of us to take seriously the spiritual and intellectual heritage of Islam, and draw on the vast resources it offers us for living as meaningful deputies (khalifas, as in Qur’an 2:30) of God in the world today. In the Progressive Muslims volume, I had stated:

Progressive Muslims insist on a serious engagement with the full spectrum of Islamic thought and practices. There can be no progressive Muslim movement that does not engage the very “stuff” (textual and material sources) of the Islamic tradition, even if some of us would wish to debate what “stuff” that should be and how it ought to be interpreted. …To state the obvious, a progressive Muslim agenda has to be both progressive and Islamic, in the sense of deriving its inspiration from the heart of the Islamic tradition. It cannot survive as a graft of Secular Humanism onto the tree of Islam, but must emerge from within that very entity. It can receive and surely has received inspiration from other spiritual and political movements, but it must ultimately grow in the soil of Islam.

My serious concern at this point is that some of the organizations that have adopted the name “progressive Muslims” today are dangerously close (if not already there) of falling into the trap of providing the “Islamic veneer” for many positions without seriously taking the challenge of engaging the traditions of Islam.

4) Reviving the spiritual core of a reform movement:One of my great hopes had been that this reform movement would be marked by a genuine spiritual core, something that would combine and yet go beyond the earlier rationalistic 20th century movements with Sufi etiquette and postmodern, post-colonial liberation stances. Yet for me the spiritual core has always been and remains at the center. As I see it, there is no way of transforming society without simultaneously transforming the hearts of human beings.

5) Recovering courtesy and spiritual mannersIt is imperative for the lofty social ideals of progressive Muslims to be reflected in the adab and akhlaq of our interpersonal relations. I continue to hope that some of the Sufi ethics of dealing with fellow human beings would characterize our dealings with one another, to always recall and remember the reflection of Divine Presence and qualities in one another. Some would call that romantic or idealistic. Maybe so. I for one continue to hold on firmly to the notion that without romance and idealism we have no hope of being and becoming fully human. Here, as in so many places, Gandhi had a keen observation: “As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion overriding morality.” On far too many occasions, many of us progressives have lost the moral basis of interpersonal relations. What is particularly disappointing to me is that we have time and again risen to defend those whose points of view and practice have been hard to justify under any existing interpretation of Islam, but have been quick to demonize many who have done no more than simply present what has up until now been traditional and common Muslim attitudes towards issues that are now part of the culture wars (homosexuality, interpretations of scripture, etc.). My hope is still that a smaller community marked by true love and devotion for one another would be capable of incredible transformations. That after all is Islam’s own legacy starting from the time of the each of the prophets, including our own beloved Messenger of God (S). What a beautiful example for each of us to emulate, as we all seek to establish small, humane communities around us. Large numbers of people who are being rude and uncivil to one another have no hope of transforming the world, much less themselves. Love heals. Love transforms. That is why I have felt so strongly that progressive communities, indeed all human communities, should be permeated by that type of loving person-to-person relationships.

Conclusion:I pray that the above comments, as hard as they have been perhaps to read, will inspire some to address some of the present shortcomings of progressive movement. Sadly, I am certain that some Muslim-haters such as Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer will interpret this as the imploding of the progressive movement. There have been some vicious attacks against many of us from sites on both the far right and the far left of the Muslim community, and I can anticipate their criticisms/rejoicing as well. So why bother? Simply because I believe that the ability of Muslims in America to contribute to the grand project of Islamic reform (or whatever one wishes to call it) is at stake.

I recently had a chance to spend a long day in conversation with some Christian activists who had worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. One of their insightful comments has stayed with me: What Martin said was the same as what Christian preachers had been saying for about one hundred years. What was new is that people had heard that message so many times that when the charismatic teacher came along, what he said simply resonated with that which had known to be true in the innermost chamber of their heart. Our task today is not to simply parody Martin, as much as some of us may idealize him. I believe that the best we can do at this moment in history is to work on projects on scales large and small to establish righteous communities and just/compassionate interpretations of Islam. When the time for the movement to emerge triumphantly will come, our struggle—indeed jihad—will have the benefit of letting the truths be self-evident to the innermost chamber of Muslim hearts.

Our struggle is both for ourselves and for our children. We have to be willing to live with the realization that none of us will get to live long enough to actually see the realization of a just world. But in the endeavor to bring that world around, our own lives will have achieved the dignity and meaning to which we are entitled. And we pray that our children may come to live in a world in which their dignity as Muslims, as citizens of this planet, and as human beings is engaged and acknowledged. Towards that day, starting today, we rise….

Amin….

Omid Safi

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Omid Safi is an associate professor of Islamic Studies at Colgate University, in Hamilton, NY. He specializes on Islamic mysticism, contemporary Islamic thought, and medieval Islamic history. He is the Chair for the Study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion, the largest international organization devoted to the academic study of religion. He was until recently a founder and the co-chair for the Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMUNA). Omid, along with the most of the Board of Directors, resigned from PMUNA in Summer 2005.

He is the editor of the volume Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003). His work The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam is forthcoming from UNC Press in early 2006. He has written over 30 articles and some 75 encyclopedia entries and book reviews. He has been featured a number of times on NPR, Associated Press, and other national and international media.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

SULAIMANIYA: Ahmed Jassem, a Shia from Iraq’s holy city of Kerbala, sticks knives into the bodies of his mostly Sunni followers. They say they feel no pain, standing silently as the blades pierce their skin.

While sectarian strife threatens to tear Iraq apart, mystical Sufi orders like the Kasnazani still manage to bring Sunni and Shias, as well as Arabs and Kurds, together.

Sunni insurgents are fighting a relentless battle against the Shia-led government which came to power after the US invasion of 2003, but within the confines of Sufi gatherings the Islamic sects mutilate each other to get close to God.

“God said the most blessed among you is the most pious, being close to God has nothing to do with your background,” said Jassem at a weekly meeting of the Kasnazani order in Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq.

“The Kasnazani order makes no difference between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd, or Iranian,” said the man whose job is to mortify the flesh of other Muslims.

His Sunni followers proudly display their wounds. One man has three large kitchen knives lodged into his scalp. Another has a skewer entering one cheek and exiting from the other. All around people sway in a hypnotic daze to the Sufi music.

Sufism — a mystical form of Islam that is more liberal than the more demanding Sunni Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia — appeals to Shias because of its veneration of members of the Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) family.

The founders of many Sufi orders trace a bloodline that goes back to the holy Prophet. Followers try to get closer to the divine through dance, music and other physical rituals.

The Kasnazani is Iraq’s largest Sufi order and is a branch of the Qadiriyya order which spreads across the Muslim world.

“When the knife comes out, the dervish is healed straight away. This is the blessing of God and power of the order.”

Each apprentice, or dervish, goes through spiritual and physical training in order to learn how to endure what would otherwise be considered forms of torture.

Qusay Abdel-Latif, a doctor from Basra in south Iraq, said this divine intervention has tempered his belief in science.

“Once they wrapped an electric wire around my body and ran electricity through it, but I didn’t feel anything. I got closer to God through this,” he said.

“I can only explain it through the divine power that prevented the pain from the electricity, which as we know should mean death or serious consequences,” he said.

The Kasnazani order has been forced to take a low profile in recent years. Its leader, Sheikh Mohammed al-Kasnazani, left Baghdad for Iraqi Kurdistan in 1999 after military dictator Saddam Hussein’s government became suspicious of his popularity. Kasnazani’s sons are active in politics, running a political party and a national newspaper which tries to walk a fine line through the country’s sectarian minefield.

Islamist radicals among the insurgency frown on Sufism as emotional superstition. While deadly attacks on the order have been rare, 10 people died in a suicide attack on a Kasnazani gathering in Balad, north of Baghdad, in June.

“The Islamist extremists like Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunna and the Wahhabis are against Sufism, and since Kasnazani is the main order they are against us,” said Abdel-Salam al-Hadithi, spokesman of the Central Council for Sufi Orders in Baghdad.—Reuters

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Ten followers of the mystic Islamic Sufi movement were killed last night in a suicide bombing in a remote village north of Baghdad.

And on Friday, four Iraqis, including an army Brigadier, are reported to have been killed as government security forces and the US military continued their operations to clear insurgents from Baghdad.

According to a US military briefing, the crowd of Sufi worshippers was attacked by a suicide car bomber in the village of Saud, near the town of Balad, about 425 miles north of Baghdad, late last night. The explosion completed a bloody day in which nearly 50 people were killed in shootings and bombings across the country.

Sufi mystics are a target of Islamic extremists, who dispute their interpretation of the Koran. Twelve people were also injured in the explosion.

Ahmed Hamid, a Sufi witness told the Associated Press: "I was among 50 people inside the tekiya (Sufi gathering place) practicing our rites when the building was hit by a big explosion. Then, there was chaos everywhere and human flesh scattered all over the place."

The bombing brought Thursday's death toll to 49, of whom more than 30 were killed in four suicide bombings in the north of Iraq. A Shia cleric was also shot in the southern city of Basra.

On Friday, gunmen killed Brigadier Sabah Qara Alton, a Turkman member of the Kirkuk City Council, after he left a mosque in the northern city. Elsewhere across the country, two Iraqis, including a child, died when their car collided with a U.S military Bradley fighting vehicle. Today's casualties bring the number of people killed, including US forces, to more than 825 since Iraq's new Shia-led government was announced on April 28.

Despite the widespread violence, the Iraqi Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, claimed on Thursday that "Operation Lightning", the largest offensive launched by the Iraqi government since the fall of Saddam Hussein two years ago, was achieving success.

According to the Interior Minister, the operation, which involves 40,000 soldiers and police, has killed 28 militants and captured more than 700 since it was launched last week. Before the operation began, authorities controlled just eight of Baghdad's 23 entrances.

And there was optimism today for the life of Australian hostage, Douglas Wood, who was kidnapped at the end of April.

Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly, Australia's top cleric, who has been in Baghdad trying to secure the freedom of the 63-year-old engineer told the AP: "We hope, God willing, that within the next few hours to hear news about the hostage’s (imminent) release."

On May 1, a group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq issued a DVD of Mr Wood and demanded the withdrawal of Australia's 1,400 troops from Iraq.

[Old News] Sufi Muslims cannot avoid savagery in IraqEdward Wong, New York Times

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Baghdad , Iraq -- As the twilight ritual of the Sufi Muslims reached its crescendo, the five drummers pounded harder and quicker, inspiring the men standing in a circle to spin their heads ever more rapidly, their hip-length hair twirling through the air.

The sun dipped low beyond the shrine's inner courtyard, and the chanting rose in volume.

"God, you are the only surviving one, the only everlasting," the dozen men said in unison, their eyes closed, more than a hundred spectators surrounding them at this shrine in western Baghdad. "The oneness, the oneness."

Sufism, generally considered a branch of Sunni Islam, is divided into orders or brotherhoods, the most famous being that of the Mevlevi, or whirling dervishes. Sufis seek, through dance, music, chanting and other intensely physical rituals, to transcend worldly existence and perceive the face of the divine. Their mysticism has contributed to their pacific reputation.

But in Iraq, no one is ever far removed from war. In a sign of the widening and increasingly complex rifts in Iraqi society, Sufis have suddenly found themselves the targets of attacks. Many Iraqis believe those responsible are probably fundamentalist Sunnis who view the Sufis as apostates, just one step removed from the Shiites.

Sheikh Ali al-Faiz, a senior official at this Sufi shrine, or takia, rattled off a list of recent assaults: The leader of a takia in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi was abducted and killed in mid-August; a bomb exploded in a takia in Kirkuk earlier this year; gunmen beat Sufi worshipers at a mosque in Ramadi in January; a bomb exploded in the kitchen of a takia in Ramadi last September ,and a bomb in April 2004 destroyed an entire takia in the same city.

The early attacks were frightening, but until this spring there had been few Sufi deaths. Then, on June 2, a suicide bomber rammed a minivan packed with explosives into a takia outside the town of Balad, 40 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 12.

The attack took place in the middle of a ritual. The minivan hurtled through the front gate, then exploded when people ran toward it, said a neighboring farmer who gave his name as Abu Zakaria. "I hurried there with my brothers in my car," he said. "It was a mess of bodies. I carried bodies to the car without knowing whether they were dead or alive."

Five days later, at a gathering of mourners in an assembly hall fashioned from reeds in the village of Mazaree, the head of the takia, Sheikh Idris Aiyash, lamented the loss of his father and three brothers. "If we keep on like this, we might really face civil war," he said.

Some Sufi groups in Iraq have built up militias and are bracing for more violence.

At the recent twilight ceremony here, Kalashnikov-wielding guards watched from a rooftop. "It's really chaotic now in our society, because the killer doesn't know the people he's killing, and those killed don't know why they've been killed," al-Faiz said. "The entire community is threatened, including us."

There are no accurate estimates of the number of Sufis in Iraq, though the biggest orders are in Baghdad and Kurdish Iraqi. Al-Faiz said there were dozens of takias in the capital alone and more than 100 across the country before the war. That number may have dropped by as much as a third since the U. S. invasion, he said.

The guerrilla war has hindered the flow of pilgrims to the Abdul-Qadir al- Gailani Mosque in central Baghdad, one of the world's most important Sufi shrines. Stalls selling religious souvenirs outside stood largely neglected one recent afternoon. Sheikh Mahmoud al-Esawi, the imam of the mosque, said Sufi visitors from far-flung places like India, Pakistan and Europe had stopped coming.

Many takias across the capital have opted to hold their ceremonies in the late afternoon, so worshipers can get home before sundown. "The lack of security has created many negatives in our society," al-Esawi said. "Some groups dislike the takias and their rituals."

Many Iraqis say the attack outside Balad was probably carried out by Sunni Arabs of the fundamentalist Salafi sect, which counts Osama bin Laden and the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi among its adherents. If so, it might be an indication that the most hard-line Sunnis will increasingly turn on other Sunnis as sectarian divides widen.

But the bombing may have had its roots in a tangled web of religion and politics. The takia belonged to the Kasnazani order, which has emerged as the most political and possibly the largest Sufi group in the country. Its wealthy Kurdish founder, Sheikh Muhammad Abdul-Kareem al-Kasnazani, has made many enemies. Martin van Bruinessen, a professor of Islamic studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said that in the 1970s and early '80s, al- Kasnazani, with the backing of Saddam Hussein, led a militia against the Kurdish forces of Jalal Talabani, who is now Iraq's president.

Al-Kasnazani then established himself in Arab Iraq, increasing his following and acting as a middleman for Hussein's oil sales. He became close friends with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, now Hussein's most-wanted former aide.

But the sheikh had a falling-out with Hussein shortly before the U.S. invasion. In a measure of his lasting power, he was able to flee to the Kurdish capital of Sulaimaniya, where he now lives under Talabani's protection. From there, the sheikh almost certainly helped the United States plan for the invasion of Iraq, said Bruinessen, who suspects that al-Kasnazani was a valuable informant whom CIA officers called "the pope."

With the motives for the devastating attack in Mazaree unclear, Sufi groups are still reaching out and performing their ceremonies for non-Sufis, sometimes for money but usually with the intent that the spectators may see God. Sufi groups in Iraq have even performed at U.S. military bases.

Before the evening of dancing and chanting began at the takia in western Baghdad, which belongs to the Kasnazani order, an elder in gray robes and a turban plunged a foot-long dagger resembling a barbecue skewer through the lower jaw of a teenage boy sitting on the shrine's carpeted floor. He did the same to the left breast of a man who had stripped off his shirt. The man and the boy just stared ahead, apparently not feeling any pain, proud to demonstrate the strength of their faith to two American visitors.

Ali Unsal pulled the table closer to his chair and opened the Koran, Islam's holy book. His friends, gathered in his simply furnished Fairfax living room, grew quiet, and their weekly Islamic study session began.

Unsal's reading from the book was followed by a discussion about religious sincerity. The three women and eight men then talked about the spiritual benefits of fasting to prepare for Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that begins tonight when the new, very thin crescent moon appears.

For these young professionals, all immigrants from Turkey, the regular gatherings are enriching. "It's kind of like brainstorming," said Zehra Turan, 34, of Fairfax City, a mother of two who is studying for her medical board exams. "Ten minds are looking from maybe 10 windows on the same subject. So we can see more sides. . . . It helps me feel more strongly about my faith."

Such sessions are common among Turkish Muslims who -- like the Fairfax group -- embrace the ideas of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish mystic and scholar who teaches a moderate, outward-looking brand of Islam.

Gulen, 64, has been living in the United States for the past six years. A reclusive figure, he shuns interviews and television appearances. But in recent years, his outlook, which stresses modern life and Islamic spirituality, has gained a growing number of supporters in Turkey and among the Washington area's estimated 20,000 Turks.

He presents "a modern interpretation of Islam compatible with science, democracy and freedom," said Hasan Ali Yurtsever, 38, a research scholar in Georgetown University's mathematics department and a member of the study group.

"After 9/11, a lot of groups said they are moderate and changed their rhetoric," said Zeyno Baran, director of International Security and Energy Programs at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank. "But the Gulen movement for the last 30 to 40 years has been saying the same thing. They have not changed their language because they want to be okay now."

Gulen's thought is heavily influenced by Sufism, the ancient mystical sect of Islam that emphasizes a personal religious experience of God as divine love.

In particular, the Gulen movement reveres the 13th century Sufi mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi, who lived in Turkey. And Gulen serves as honorary chairman of the Rumi Forum, a Washington area group that promotes interfaith activities and such cultural events as recent performances in Washington and Norfolk of the Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul.

Whirling dance is a form of prayer for some Sufis. But nowadays, it is more a cultural expression of Sufi Islam, said Yurtsever, the forum's president.

In Turkey, the Gulen movement is a presence in hundreds of schools that follow a rigorous secular curriculum heavily weighted toward science. Religious instruction follows a government-approved syllabus or is nonexistent. Gulen followers in Turkey also run the daily newspaper Zaman, an Islamic-oriented television channel, radio stations and an Islamic bank.

Though nonpolitical, the movement is controversial in some Turkish quarters. Radical Islamists revile it, saying it is too open to Western ideas and other faiths, and many military officials and secular-oriented intellectuals worry that Gulen and his devotees secretly want to establish an Islamic state in Turkey.

Gulen has faced criminal charges several times of seeking to overthrow Turkey's established secular political order. The latest charges against him, made in 1999, were nullified after recent legal reforms there, according to Turkey scholars, who say Gulen lives in the United States -- in Pennsylvania and New Jersey -- so he can be treated for a heart condition.

At Unsal's home in Fairfax, the guests came casually dressed and, following Turkish custom, left their shoes inside, at the front door.

The men and women mingled, and only one of the women wore a head scarf. The group included two businessmen, a schoolteacher and a historian. Gulen had written the essay they discussed on "Sincerity or Purity of Intention."

"Sincerity starts with the heart and then comes to your mouth and deeds," said Unsal, 33, who holds graduate degrees in theology and is publicity manager for the McLean-based American Turkish Friendship Association.

He urged his fellow Muslims "not to show off" and to keep their good works between themselves and God.

"Only God knows if you are sincere. There is no way to measure sincerity," added Ali Aslan, 38, Washington correspondent for Zaman.

"There is no sincere-o-meter," Yurtsever quipped, making everyone laugh.

With the formal discussion over, the group shared Turkish food and conversation.

Like others at the session, McLean resident Fatih Guner, 36, a bathroom-tile manufacturer, said he is eager for U.S residents to learn about Turkish Islam because of its tolerance.

"Gulen encourages Muslims to go to the West and show them what Islam is," said Aslan. "We are trying to be good role models."

Everyone in the group was looking forward to Ramadan.

Turan, who has been in the United States nine years, said she will decorate her home for Ramadan and have her children, ages 8 and 6, practice fasting for a few hours on weekends. She also will have them watch Turkish satellite television channels so they can see how Ramadan is celebrated in her native country.

"I'll try more to have them understand Ramadan as I understand it at home," she said.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Local Muslim Abdu Raheman has confirmed to Forum 18 News Service that the government of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of China's north-western Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region banned the Sala movement – a local Sufi Muslim order - in August and that an unknown number of its followers have been arrested.

Forum 18 News Service has been unable to find out why the government of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of China's north-western Xinjiang Region banned the Sala Sufi Muslim order as a "dangerous" group in August. "I'm not prepared to voice an opinion on whether or not this order is harmful," a professor from Beijing's Institute of Nationalities told Forum 18. But she denied that if any practitioners had been arrested it was for their religious beliefs. The German-based World Uyghur Congress says 179 people have been held. Local Muslim Abdu Raheman told Forum 18 that the practitioners were seized by the security services. "There was no court case against them, so no-one knows how long they will spend behind bars." He views the moves – which also include closures of mosques and seizures of religious literature - as part of a campaign against local Huis, ethnic Chinese Muslims. "The religious practices of the Huis bring out the international nature of Islam, and that aggravates the authorities."Local Muslim Abdu Raheman has confirmed to Forum 18 News Service that the government of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of China's north-western Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region banned the Sala movement – a local Sufi Muslim order - in August and that an unknown number of its followers have been arrested. "It wasn't the police who arrested them, but the security services," he told Forum 18 on 21 September in Ghulja (Yining in Chinese), the capital of the prefecture which lies close to the border with Kazakhstan. "There was no court case against them, so no-one knows how long they will spend behind bars." He said that virtually all of those arrested were Huis, ethnic Chinese Muslims who make up about eight per cent of the prefecture's population.

The local paper, the Yili Daily, reported last month that high-ranking prefectural officials held a special work conference on the Sala "threat" on 17 August. Zhang Yun, who is in charge of supervising the prefecture's religious affairs, warned government and communist party officials of the "dangerous" nature of Sala and said it had be to banned along with other illegal religions. Sala leaders were accused of "cheating and deceiving the masses, and inciting them to worship their religious leaders", and of pressuring followers to make donations to the organisation. Officials also accused its leaders of encouraging "trans-provincial worship" and "threatening social stability". However, official publications made no mention of any arrests. The German-based World Uyghur Congress later reported that 179 practitioners had been arrested.

Forum 18 was unable to find out why state officials had banned the Sala order. "Sala is a Sufi order that came to China from Central Asia," Ding Hong, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Nationalities, told Forum 18 from the capital on 23 September. "I'm not prepared to voice an opinion on whether or not this order is harmful. But I am sure that if some member of the order has been arrested, it was not for their religious beliefs."

"I'm sorry, but I am too busy to answer your questions," Dimu La Ti, rector at the Humanities College in the regional capital Urumqi [Ürümqi], told Forum 18 on 24 September. Forum 18 also telephoned the Beijing Institute of Social Issues the same day, but was told to send a formal written query and to give a detailed description of Forum 18 News Service's activities.

According to Chinese official sources, Sala was founded in the early 20th century in Qinghai province south-east of Xinjiang and has thousands of adherents, primarily from the Muslim ethnic Hui and Salar communities in Qinghai province, as well as in neighbouring Gansu province.

"Sala is a Sufi brotherhood which has similar rituals to those of the Sufi Qadiriyya brotherhood," Abdu Raheman, the owner of Ghulja's largest honey-producing company, told Forum 18. He stressed that virtually all the followers of Sala in the Ili-Kazakh autonomous prefecture are, like him, ethnic Huis.

Raheman believes the authorities are restricting the rights of Muslims of all ethnic background but are particularly harsh with the Huis. "The authorities want to suggest that Islam is the national religion of Turkish-speaking people who live in China – the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz," he claimed. "The only thing distinguishing the Huis from other Chinese is their faith. The religious practices of the Huis bring out the international nature of Islam, and that aggravates the authorities."

He also confirmed that the authorities have launched a campaign to track down unauthorised religious literature. "The security services are searching for unauthorised religious books in Islamic bookshops and in private homes," he reported. "I personally know four Huis who have been arrested because they were found to have ancient religious books in Uyghur."

Abdu Raheman reports that the authorities have closed at least two Hui mosques in the past three months – one in the village of Tekes 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Ghulja and another in the village of Huocheng 100 kilometres (62 miles) north-west of Ghulja. The first mosque was closed because three Chinese had converted to Islam, he said, while the second was closed because the authorities felt the mosque building was too large (for earlier mosque closures in the area see F18News 4 April 2005 ).

Abdu Raheman claims that there is far less provision for Muslims' rights in Xinjiang than in the central parts of the country, which are more economically and socially developed. "In Henan province, children can attend Arabic-language schools which operate quite legally, but the Xinjiang authorities have ordered that pupils from the autonomous region be taken out of the school."

Raheman believes the authorities are unhappy with his critical comments and are trying to put indirect pressure on him. "Just recently, the authorities ended a rental contract for a cottage, for which I had a 50-year agreement. As a result, my family has had to move elsewhere."

The government tightly controls the practice of religion in Xinjiang, particularly among ethnic Uyghurs, who now make up some 42 per cent of the regional population.

In addition to the most recent arrests among the Sala practitioners, elsewhere in Xinjiang the authorities arrested a Uyghur religious instructor, Aminan Momixi, and 37 of her students aged between 7 and 20 after bursting into her home on 1 August, the World Uyghur Congress reported. Police accused her of "illegally possessing religious materials and subversive historical information". The Uyghur Human Rights Project reported that police in central Xinjiang detained three Uyghurs on 20 July for possession of the Mishkat-ul Misabih, a religious text describing the life and work of the Muslim prophet Muhammed

Friday, October 21, 2005

Devotees of Sufi saint went in a procession from the dargah on Madurai Road in Tiruchi to the Cauvery Water stored in jars, believed to have healing properties, is given as `holy water'

TIRUCHI: Shortly after midnight, descendants and devotees of Sufi saint Hazrath Thable Alam Badhusha Natharvali went in a procession from the dargah on Madurai Road in Tiruchi to the Cauvery, carrying new empty mud pots.

In the wee hours of Wednesday, they took a dip in the river and returned to the dargah with pots full of water, with which they washed the four tombs of Hazrath Nathervali and other Sufi saints there. Without letting the water spill on the floor, they carefully collected the water flowing down the tombs in glass jars. The water stored in the jars, believed to have healing properties, is given as `holy water' in small doses to the people beset with illness.

A highlight of this ritual is that the water in the glass jars, which the devotees adore, retains its freshness throughout the year even when kept at room temperature. The remaining water of the previous year is poured on plants and trees to nourish them. The earthen pots are used to store cereals.

This ritual termed, `Thurbat', undertaken on the eve of the 1008th `Sandanakoodu', dates back to 10 centuries.

Says Syed Ishaq Khalander Hussaini Suharwardy, a Khalifa (descendant): "Devotees of the Sufi saint in Tiruchi have been continuing the practice without any let-up from time immemorial. The reverential river has always been a part and parcel of our traditional practice."

Abundant water this year has facilitated devotees to undertake a full exercise of the ritual.

Monday, October 17, 2005

"Sufism is the soul of Kashmiriyat and it is this which makes Kashmir unique in the world", Jammu and Kashmir Governor Lt. Gen (retd) S K Sinha has said.

Inaugurating the Lal Ded festival organised by the Sahitya Academy last evening at the SKICC, the Governor said that "great Sufis and saints have preached love and peace which have transcended the boundaries and barriers of the Valley, spreading light in the world." General Sinha said poetry and music elevated humanity to the highest pinnacles of spirituality and hoped the great values preached by Sufis and saints will inspire the generations.

Academy secretary Sachidananda threw light on the rich ethos of Kashmiriyat and read out english translations of Lal Ded's poems.

Noted poet Rehman Rahi read a paper on Lal Ded and the evening started with her 'vaakh' by Jameela Khatoon.

The festival is jointly organized by the Sahitya Academy, Academy of art, culture and language and Sopori Academy of music and fine arts.

Dervishes and Sufi singers have long been revered in the West, even as their practices have come under threat across the Islamic world. Peter Culshaw reports on a series of revelatory encounters with different mystics

Sunday October 16, 2005The Observer

It had taken me a week to track down the underground dervish scene in Istanbul - the only dervish contact I had in the city was a carpet-seller called Abdullah deep in the bazaar. As with all quests, the difficulty only added to the sense of occasion when I did manage to locate them. Finally I found myself at a zikr (a remembrance) among 80 or so dervishes in a hidden tekke (religious house), and they began to chant, rhythmically, the name of Allah. It was one of the most powerful sounds I have ever heard. In addition to a weaving violin and a zither that sends chills down your spine, there is a solo voice - similar to the muezzin's call from the minarets - that is full of heartbreaking longing. This is serious blues music, I thought. I was sitting in the middle of the group and, although I had permission to take photographs, I couldn't actually stand - pinned back by the weight of numbers but also by what seemed a spiritual force field.When the tension was close to unbearable, 12 dervishes filed into the adjoining room and, in unison, took off their black cloaks - as if it were a holy fashion show - revealing white robes. Then they started spinning with incredible grace. This angelic whirling is a perfect counterpoint to the earthly chanting. Photographs can't prepare you for the disorienting feeling that the dervishes are defying gravity. It takes months of training for them to defy dizziness.

The dervishes are all Sufis, seekers on the mystical path to God, and are members of different Brotherhoods, chief among them Mevlevis, the school founded by the mystic poet Rumi 700 years ago. If the impression often given in the media is of Muslims as puritan fanatics, followers of this branch (and the words dervish and Sufi are interchangeable) have been responsible for much of the rich Islamic heritage of music, poetry and arts from Persia to Andalucia.

Nearly all the great musicians were Sufi disciples. From the 9th century, Sufi ascetics wandered the Islamic world, attracting followers to their gentle form of mystical Islam (the word Sufi is often thought to have come from suuf - wool - from the woollen garments the holy men wore). The shrines of the Sufi masters have become important places of pilgrimage. Their path is an attempt to transcend the ego and achieve unity with the divine, with the help of a sheikh (also called pir) and of prayer, meditation and, in the case of the whirling dervishes, dancing. Many European writers have been fascinated by Sufism - Richard Burton, the translator of the Kama Sutra, was initiated as a dervish, and Doris Lessing and Ted Hughes shared his interest ('the Sufis are the most sensible collection of people on the planet', Hughes once said).

Like much of Sufism, the performance of the whirling dervishes works on many levels and is charged with symbolism. The funereal black cloak represents a tomb. In casting this off the dervishes discard all worldly ties. They spin with the right arm extended to heaven and the left to the floor - grace is received from Allah and distributed to humanity. The dervishes are meditation in movement, prayer as dance.

Abdullah introduced me to the pir, and I asked him about the zikr. 'The purpose of life is to remember Allah,' he said. 'Every electron and proton is whirling round a nucleus, as the planets whirl round the sun - and all of them are chanting for Allah. Even your heartbeat' - he thumped his chest - 'is chanting All-lah, All-lah.' Then he reached deep into his robes, beamed a huge smile and offered me a sweet.

I became interested in Sufi music at one of the first Womad festivals in the early Eighties. People talk about an artist being a revelation, and that was exactly how it felt when Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan started singing his rhythmic qawwali music. He and his group - singers, harmonium and tabla players - were supposed to play an hour but went on for much longer. We were all supposed to go and catch the headliner - New Order or perhaps the Fall - but no one, as far as I could tell, moved from the tent, the audience transfixed by Nusrat's passion.

Nusrat's family (originally from Afghanistan, a traditional centre of Sufism) have an unbroken tradition of singing qawwali for 600 years, yet you felt, somehow, as if you were plugging into something utterly modern. Nusrat became known world-wide and by the time of his death, aged 49, in 1997, following a record 125 albums, there were plans for a duet with Pavorotti.

Nusrat was devoted to spreading his music and its message of peace. His tour manager, Adam Nayyar, told me that once in Japan, Nusrat spent the entire evening watching TV, concentrating on the commercials. When Nayyar asked what he was doing, he said he figured that the clever Japanese must have worked out the most effective music to reach the maximum number of people in their ads. At the concert the next day, Nayyar spotted melodies from TV ads in Nusrat's improvisations.

After his death, his nephew, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, took over his qawwali group. Although no one could compare to Nusrat, the group remain formidable, and can be seen next month as part of the Barbican Centre's Ramadan Nights, which also features Sufi street singer Sain Zahoor, a more classical Arabic Sufi group, the al-Kindi Ensemble with Sheikh Habboush, and whirling dervishes from Syria. The founder of al-Kindi, Jalaluddin Weiss, is a Frenchman whose fascination with Sufi music has led him to become a leading exponent of the oriental zither (qanun).

The Barbican season coincides with a fascinating Channel 4 documentary. Sufi Soul is presented by writer William Dalrymple and features extraordinary scenes from Pakistan, such as a festival at the shrine of a Sufi saint (Shah Abdul Latif), which evokes a subcontinental Las Vegas.

More impressive still, perhaps, is the transcendental voice of Abida Parveen. She claims that, on a good night, she reaches 'a high level of ecstasy - very close to God'. I've seen people weeping in the aisles at her concerts - and when she played in New York's Central Park scores of people fainted.

Tempting though it is to dismiss Parveen's claims that she can see Sufi saints among the audience, Sufism has a tradition of female mystics, notably the eighth century's Rabia al-Basri, who ran through the streets of Basra in Iraq with a blazing torch in one hand and a container of water in the other. Asked what she was doing, she is reported to have said: 'The water is to extinguish the fires of hell, the torch to set fire to paradise - so no one worships God for fear of hell or greed for Paradise.'

As for the al-Kindi Ensemble, I saw them at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music. Set up in response to 1991's Gulf war, the festival is a courageous and inspiring attempt to bring together differing spiritual traditions. Here you can see everything from gospel to Jewish music, from Indian classical to all kinds of Sufi sounds. It is the brainchild of Sufi scholar Faouzi Skali, who wanted to counter 'the stereotypical view Muslims have of the West and vice versa', and to celebrate the fact that 'the world is not uniform; there's a richness of spiritual traditions it's important to know and preserve. Or we will have a world without soul and that would be terrible.'

It's the kind of sentiment echoed by most students of Sufism, such as Coleman Barks, whose translations of Rumi propelled the 13th century mystic into, bizarrely, becoming the bestselling poet in America in the Nineties (Madonna was a fan). Rumi, insists Barks, 'had followers of different faiths in his lifetime. I see him as someone who kicked free of doctrinal confinement'.

From the beginning, Sufi has been a pluralistic faith. The early ascetics were influenced by the Byzantine Christian desert mystics and even now it has elements of animism and paganism. Once, a businessman sitting next to me on a plane to Tangiers told me his wife's mother had the ability, after going into a music-induced trance, to drink boiling water, and to spit it out again a few seconds later ice cold. His current problem was that his daughter had been put under a spell by a frog. Frogs, he explained, as if discussing VAT, are prone to being possessed by 'devils'. The difficulty was you never knew if it was a good or a bad devil. He probably was translating the word djiin which, through fairy tales of Arabic origin, we know as 'genie' (they are mentioned in the Koran, so are not automatically heretical). Not only frogs, he told me, but cats and dogs must be treated with due respect as they may be djiin in disguise.

A minority of Sufi sects go in for extreme practices while under trance, including lacerating themselves with knives, and eating live scorpions and snakes. Some of these rituals have now been outlawed. The music of the Aissawa sect is fabulously rhythmic, with long horns 'to wake the faithful', literally and figuratively. René Brunel, who wrote about the Aissawa in the 1920s, described his experience of 'the furious tempest of drums and oboes', saying the spectators were 'in the grip of the terrifying staccato music seized by this contagious madness and ecstatic frenzy which none can resist'. The best exponents of this music, like Said Guissi, produce some of the most exciting music in the world.

Sufis have occasionally dispensed with the traditional observances of Islam, such as the haj to Mecca, although most have observed the customary rules. In any case, it is not surprising that Sufis and dervishes have had a tough time in many Islamic countries. When I was in Pakistan, qawwali singer Qari Saaed Chisti was shot, apparently for singing a song about how there are many ways up the mountain to God. There is only one - according to the puritan Islamicists. Strict fundamentalists oppose music in any form as a sensual distraction - the Taliban, of course, banned music in Afghanistan. William Dalrymple puts it in stark terms: 'The real clash of civilisations is not between the West and Islam, it's a clash within Islam between the Sufis, who believe in tolerance, and the intolerance of the fundamentalists.'

Certainly, that's something I've seen in my travels across the Muslim world - from India and Pakistan, to Yemen, Morocco, Senegal, Central Asia and Indonesia. After seeing Abida Parveen in Morocco, I was so impressed I felt impelled to seek her out in her homeland of Pakistan. I flew in on 9 September 2001, spent a couple of days with Abida and then went to a hotel, only to see the Twin Towers collapsing on TV. It wasn't the most sensible time to be in Islamabad. But Parveen and the other Sufi musicians were deeply troubled and prayed for peace.

While travelling in Yemen in search of Sufi music, I was told (by the tourism minister) that I was the only tourist and I should have armed protection. At my hotel, owned by the bin Laden family, Hamas held a press conference celebrating suicide bombers. My guard told me if he hadn't got to like me he would have killed me - this would have guaranteed his passage to Paradise. 'If I go to Paradise I will have an eternity of women, drink, drugs - anything I like,' he confided. My Wahabi guide, Sayeed, tried to tell me that hardly anyone followed Sufism any more. The landscape was littered with Sufi shrines, many now destroyed. But at the town of Seyun, I saw a library full of Sufi poetry and met a music group led by Shukkri Hassan Baraji. Listening to their mix of East African drumming and Swahili and Arabic lyrics, I felt, at least for one night, divisions between cultures melting away.

Back in Istanbul, a city half in Europe and half in Asia, a pivotal point between East and West, an Islamic country with a secular state, I met a Sufi pharmacist, whose library of books was above his shop. He believed that only by going to the core of the truth that we have in common, rather than trusting in the divisive man-made institutions of religion, can there be hope for the future. In Turkey too, Sufism is frowned upon - although in the city of Konya, there are celebrations on the anniversary of Rumi's death every year. This is a state-sanctioned occasion, and it is a stately spectacle with many whirlers and a semi-classical orchestra staged in a basketball stadium in front of coachloads of Japanese tourists. There was none of the passion I'd seen among the Istanbul dervishes.

The pharmacist said Sufis 'tap into the river from which all streams flow' and the West's increasing interest in Sufi music and poetry could be a source of a new understanding between East and West. Walking in the night air along the Bosphorus where the city light scintillated on the water, I envied the dervishes their passion, their longing and their faith. On my way back to my hotel I walked past the devastated British Council, recently bombed by Islamic extremists, and I hoped he was right.

One, two, sufi...

204 --The number of countries in which Sufism is practised

1.3 --The number, in billions, of Muslims worldwide

20 --The percentage of Muslims who class themselves as Sufis

10 --The number of Sufi adherents, in millions, in Turkey

10 --Number of Sufi adherents, in thousands, in Germany

195 --Number of practising Sufis in New Zealand

125 --Number of albums recorded by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

· Ramadam Nights, featuring the al-Kindi Ensemble, is at the Barbican, London EC1 from 4 November. Sufi Soul is on C4 on 6 November at 11.30pm

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Police said yesterday they were investigating if a suicide bomber had detonated a powerful bomb that killed 39 devotees at a Muslim shrine in southwestern Pakistan. The bomb exploded during a memorial to a Sufi saint late Saturday in the remote town of Fatahpur, 300km from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, as worshippers ate their evening meal.

"The death toll has risen to 39 and 16 people are injured, some seriously," director of rural police Akbar Lasi told AFP yesterday.

"Investigators have reached the site of the blast and are collecting evidence," Baluchistan police chief Chaudhry Muhammad Yaqub told AFP.

"We are trying to ascertain whether it was a suicide bombing, because body of a man close to the blast site had been ripped into small pieces," Yaqub said.

He said the blast was caused by a home-made explosive device detonated by a timer.

Officials said no one had claimed responsibility for the attack, which happened at around 10:30 pm (1730 GMT).

It could have been related to sectarian violence plaguing Pakistan's Muslim community or be the work of renegade tribesmen waging a bloody struggle for more jobs, Yaqub said.

It could also have been targeted at the custodian of the shrine, Sadiq Ali Shah, who escaped unhurt, he said.

Shah has been in a dispute with relatives over the custody of the shrine and last year also survived an assassination attempt, Yaqub said.

The blast occurred as between 10,000 and 20,000 people had gathered for an annual pilgrimage at the shrine of saint Cheesal Shah, said Syed Kamil Shah, the brother of the shrine's custodian.

As well as devotees of Sufism -- a semi-mystical branch of Islam that believes music, dance and song are ways of reaching God -- followers of the rival Sunni and Shia sects were at the site with a number of Hindus, Shah said.

Many of them had only just sat down to eat when the bomb went off, witnesses said.

"The food was being handed out amongst the devotees when there was a huge, loud blast," pilgrim Mohammad Midhal told AFP.

"Everyone was wailing, they were covered in blood, staggering around and lifting up people to see if they were injured or even alive.

"It was total chaos because everything was so crowded."

A second, unexploded bomb was found near the shrine shortly after the first device detonated, Mohammad Amin Umrani, the mayor of neighbouring Naseerabad, told AFP. It was removed safely.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Challenges and Opportunities for the Progressive Muslim in North AmericaBy Omid Safi

Bism Allah al-Rahman al-Rahim

In today’s political climate, it is a cliché to begin a discourse on Islam and Muslims with the talk of “crisis.” It is not my intention here to add to that unrelenting assault on Muslims. Instead, I intend to explore the profound challenges and precious opportunity confronting Muslims who self-identify as progressive.

Who are progressive Muslims? Progressive Islam both continues and radically departs from the 150-year-old tradition of liberal Islam, that of figures like Abduh, Afghani, Rida, Shari’ati, and others. Unlike some earlier modernists, progressive Muslims are almost uniformly critical of colonialism, both in its nineteenth-century manifestation and in its current variety. Progressive Muslims develop a critical and nonapologetic “multiple critique” with respect to both Islam and modernity. Also unlike their liberal Muslim forefathers, progressive Muslims represent a broad coalition of female and male Muslim activists and intellectuals. One of the distinguishing features of the progressive Muslim movement as the vanguard of Islamic (post)modernism has been the high level of female participation as well as the move to highlight women’s rights as part of a broader engagement with human rights. Progressives measure their success not in developing new and beatific theologies but rather by the amount of change for good on the ground level that they can produce in Muslim and non-Muslim societies. This movement is noted by a number of themes: striving to realize a just and pluralistic society through critically engaging Islam, a relentless pursuit of social justice, an emphasis on gender equality as a foundation of human rights, a vision of religious and ethnic pluralism, and a methodology of nonviolent resistance.

The Progressive Movement in North America and BeyondIt is vital for us in the North American scene to realize that the majority of those who have engaged in the most meaningful Muslim struggles on behalf of social justice, liberation and gender equality have hitherto lived outside the boundaries of North America, and have in many cases never heard of the (English!) terms “Progressive Muslim,” “progressive Islam,” or the Progressive Muslim Union. There are many important movements in areas of in places like South Africa, Iran, Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere. So I hope that we in the North American scene don’t suffer from our usual myopia of thinking that we stand at the center of the cosmos.

Having said that, I continue to believe that the Muslims in North America have a historic role to play in the articulation of Islam, and that ironically the very excesses of the American Empire and the public withdrawal of many Wahhabis form the public domain post-9/11 have created a fruitful space for progressive Muslims from a host of backgrounds to get together and debate ideas here.

There have already been some important victories, and one should not lose sight of them. One of them is in the area of gender justice. Making misogynist and patriarchal comments in public has become as much of an anathema for Muslims as making illdefined calls for jihad without specifying the methods whereby it is to be undertaken (or not), or against whom. Even in those cases where the mainstream Muslim organizations’ response to issues of gender equality has been insufficiently vague (such as the “Woman Friendly Mosque” guide ), it too is a sign of a move in the right direction. I think it is important to mark these victories, as indeed they benefit all Muslims in our community, regardless of how they self-identify.

And yet I will not be focusing on the successes of the progressive Muslim movement, but on what I feel are the very serious challenges facing us. I write here both as a supporter and a self-critic of this movement, adopting the Qur’anic mandate to stand up for justice in the sight of God first of all against one’s own self and one’s own community. It is some of these same shortcomings that led me to resign from my position as the chair and a co-founder of one such organization, but I remain optimistic that if these challenges are confronted with an open heart, inquiring intellect, and self-critical sincerity, that insha’Allah more good can be done to bring out the socially just and compassionate teachings that do come from the very heart of the Islamic tradition. But deal with the challenges we must.

Confronting the Challenges Facing the Progressive Movement in North America:

1) Transcending antagonistic attitudes towards mainstream Muslim communitiesThere is a substantial difference between being an alternative to the mainstream Muslim community (something I wholeheartedly support) and being consistently antagonistic to the mainstream Muslim community (which I do not). I am very concerned about some of the statements from some of progressive Muslims that repeatedly characterize the mainstream community as Islamist, Salafi, or Wahhabi, etc. In today’s political climate, doing so is putting peoples’ lives, family, property, freedom, and reputation in grave danger. All too often those of us in the progressive community have felt that we must be unrelenting in our critique in order to be effective. Surely one can be capable of nuance without surrendering the mandate of being radical in the cause of justice and truth.My own hope is that we in the progressive movement can be a light to the community, a voice of conscience, a mandate of justice, an example of compassion….some force that through the power of its moral calling will persuade many in our community to do that which is most just, most beautiful, and most compassionate.

2) Struggling against secular tendencies in the progressive movementOne of my ambitious hopes for the progressive movement in North America had been that it would mark a “big tent” space in which Muslims of various persuasions could gather to strive for common projects, some focusing on the interpretations of Islam in the modern world and others working on concrete and grounded social projects. While the openness of that proposal still appeals to me, I have also come to see that in practice it is awfully challenging to pull off this “big tent.” In particular, one is reminded here that just as there are shades and gradations of conservative Muslims, not all Muslims who self-identify as secular are the same. The secular criticism of Edward Said is not the same as the secularism of Marx, or that of modern Europe. For Said, part of this process of “secular criticism” was characterized as follows: “In its suspicion of totalizing concepts, in its discontent with reified objects, in its impatience with guilds, special interests, imperialized fiefdoms, and orthodox habits of mind, criticism is most itself, and if the paradox can be tolerated, most unlike itself at the moment it starts turning into organized dogma.” It is worth exploring whether the term progressive Islam can and has become a dogma in and by itself, and thus ironically unlike itself—as Said suggests. As a loving self-critique, I would suggest that many progressives have become every bit as rigid, authoritarian, and yes, dogmatic as the conservative movements they/we so readily criticize. This represents a moral and philosophical failure of the highest magnitude. Among Muslims today, one also finds a variety of secular tendencies. Some come from a Muslim heritage but who are essentially agnostic in their outlook (often combined with the most anti-religious interpretations of Marxism), whereas others interpret secularism a call to keep the state powers out of the religious game. I have come to realize that in our desire to establish the widest possible ground for the “big tent” in some progressive Muslim organizations, we have left ourselves open to the problem of not having enough of a common ground. At the risk of overstating the obvious, a progressive Muslim movement has to start with at least a minimum commitment of commitment to a tawhidic perspective, the guidance of the Qur’an, and the earnest desire to emulate the Prophetic Sunna. While I will always support those who seek the check the state (whether the US, Israel, Iran, India, etc.) against favoring one religious community over others, I have come to realize that a Marxist interpretation of secularism with its hostility towards Islam as a source of inspiration presents one of the greatest sources of damage to the progressive Muslim movement. This damage is all the more pernicious as so many progressives readily identify with the Marxists’ devastating critique of socioeconomic class issues, colonialism, etc. Yet this potential ally is suffocating the spirit of progressive Islam.

3) Engagement with the multiple intellectual and spiritual traditions of IslamIt is not only to outside critics that progressives have too often seemed “insufficiently Muslim.” I think there has been an unfortunate and unnecessary hostility among some of us to take seriously the spiritual and intellectual heritage of Islam, and draw on the vast resources it offers us for living as meaningful deputies (khalifas, as in Qur’an 2:30) of God in the world today. In the Progressive Muslims volume, I had stated:

Progressive Muslims insist on a serious engagement with the full spectrum of Islamic thought and practices. There can be no progressive Muslim movement that does not engage the very “stuff” (textual and material sources) of the Islamic tradition, even if some of us would wish to debate what “stuff” that should be and how it ought to be interpreted. …To state the obvious, a progressive Muslim agenda has to be both progressive and Islamic, in the sense of deriving its inspiration from the heart of the Islamic tradition. It cannot survive as a graft of Secular Humanism onto the tree of Islam, but must emerge from within that very entity. It can receive and surely has received inspiration from other spiritual and political movements, but it must ultimately grow in the soil of Islam.

My serious concern at this point is that some of the organizations that have adopted the name “progressive Muslims” today are dangerously close (if not already there) of falling into the trap of providing the “Islamic veneer” for many positions without seriously taking the challenge of engaging the traditions of Islam.

4) Reviving the spiritual core of a reform movement:One of my great hopes had been that this reform movement would be marked by a genuine spiritual core, something that would combine and yet go beyond the earlier rationalistic 20th century movements with Sufi etiquette and postmodern, post-colonial liberation stances. Yet for me the spiritual core has always been and remains at the center. As I see it, there is no way of transforming society without simultaneously transforming the hearts of human beings.

5) Recovering courtesy and spiritual mannersIt is imperative for the lofty social ideals of progressive Muslims to be reflected in the adab and akhlaq of our interpersonal relations. I continue to hope that some of the Sufi ethics of dealing with fellow human beings would characterize our dealings with one another, to always recall and remember the reflection of Divine Presence and qualities in one another. Some would call that romantic or idealistic. Maybe so. I for one continue to hold on firmly to the notion that without romance and idealism we have no hope of being and becoming fully human. Here, as in so many places, Gandhi had a keen observation: “As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion overriding morality.” On far too many occasions, many of us progressives have lost the moral basis of interpersonal relations. What is particularly disappointing to me is that we have time and again risen to defend those whose points of view and practice have been hard to justify under any existing interpretation of Islam, but have been quick to demonize many who have done no more than simply present what has up until now been traditional and common Muslim attitudes towards issues that are now part of the culture wars (homosexuality, interpretations of scripture, etc.). My hope is still that a smaller community marked by true love and devotion for one another would be capable of incredible transformations. That after all is Islam’s own legacy starting from the time of the each of the prophets, including our own beloved Messenger of God (S). What a beautiful example for each of us to emulate, as we all seek to establish small, humane communities around us. Large numbers of people who are being rude and uncivil to one another have no hope of transforming the world, much less themselves. Love heals. Love transforms. That is why I have felt so strongly that progressive communities, indeed all human communities, should be permeated by that type of loving person-to-person relationships.

Conclusion:I pray that the above comments, as hard as they have been perhaps to read, will inspire some to address some of the present shortcomings of progressive movement. Sadly, I am certain that some Muslim-haters such as Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer will interpret this as the imploding of the progressive movement. There have been some vicious attacks against many of us from sites on both the far right and the far left of the Muslim community, and I can anticipate their criticisms/rejoicing as well. So why bother? Simply because I believe that the ability of Muslims in America to contribute to the grand project of Islamic reform (or whatever one wishes to call it) is at stake.

I recently had a chance to spend a long day in conversation with some Christian activists who had worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. One of their insightful comments has stayed with me: What Martin said was the same as what Christian preachers had been saying for about one hundred years. What was new is that people had heard that message so many times that when the charismatic teacher came along, what he said simply resonated with that which had known to be true in the innermost chamber of their heart. Our task today is not to simply parody Martin, as much as some of us may idealize him. I believe that the best we can do at this moment in history is to work on projects on scales large and small to establish righteous communities and just/compassionate interpretations of Islam. When the time for the movement to emerge triumphantly will come, our struggle—indeed jihad—will have the benefit of letting the truths be self-evident to the innermost chamber of Muslim hearts.

Our struggle is both for ourselves and for our children. We have to be willing to live with the realization that none of us will get to live long enough to actually see the realization of a just world. But in the endeavor to bring that world around, our own lives will have achieved the dignity and meaning to which we are entitled. And we pray that our children may come to live in a world in which their dignity as Muslims, as citizens of this planet, and as human beings is engaged and acknowledged. Towards that day, starting today, we rise….

Amin….

Omid Safi

************************************

Omid Safi is an associate professor of Islamic Studies at Colgate University, in Hamilton, NY. He specializes on Islamic mysticism, contemporary Islamic thought, and medieval Islamic history. He is the Chair for the Study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion, the largest international organization devoted to the academic study of religion. He was until recently a founder and the co-chair for the Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMUNA). Omid, along with the most of the Board of Directors, resigned from PMUNA in Summer 2005.

He is the editor of the volume Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003). His work The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam is forthcoming from UNC Press in early 2006. He has written over 30 articles and some 75 encyclopedia entries and book reviews. He has been featured a number of times on NPR, Associated Press, and other national and international media.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

SULAIMANIYA: Ahmed Jassem, a Shia from Iraq’s holy city of Kerbala, sticks knives into the bodies of his mostly Sunni followers. They say they feel no pain, standing silently as the blades pierce their skin.

While sectarian strife threatens to tear Iraq apart, mystical Sufi orders like the Kasnazani still manage to bring Sunni and Shias, as well as Arabs and Kurds, together.

Sunni insurgents are fighting a relentless battle against the Shia-led government which came to power after the US invasion of 2003, but within the confines of Sufi gatherings the Islamic sects mutilate each other to get close to God.

“God said the most blessed among you is the most pious, being close to God has nothing to do with your background,” said Jassem at a weekly meeting of the Kasnazani order in Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq.

“The Kasnazani order makes no difference between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd, or Iranian,” said the man whose job is to mortify the flesh of other Muslims.

His Sunni followers proudly display their wounds. One man has three large kitchen knives lodged into his scalp. Another has a skewer entering one cheek and exiting from the other. All around people sway in a hypnotic daze to the Sufi music.

Sufism — a mystical form of Islam that is more liberal than the more demanding Sunni Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia — appeals to Shias because of its veneration of members of the Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) family.

The founders of many Sufi orders trace a bloodline that goes back to the holy Prophet. Followers try to get closer to the divine through dance, music and other physical rituals.

The Kasnazani is Iraq’s largest Sufi order and is a branch of the Qadiriyya order which spreads across the Muslim world.

“When the knife comes out, the dervish is healed straight away. This is the blessing of God and power of the order.”

Each apprentice, or dervish, goes through spiritual and physical training in order to learn how to endure what would otherwise be considered forms of torture.

Qusay Abdel-Latif, a doctor from Basra in south Iraq, said this divine intervention has tempered his belief in science.

“Once they wrapped an electric wire around my body and ran electricity through it, but I didn’t feel anything. I got closer to God through this,” he said.

“I can only explain it through the divine power that prevented the pain from the electricity, which as we know should mean death or serious consequences,” he said.

The Kasnazani order has been forced to take a low profile in recent years. Its leader, Sheikh Mohammed al-Kasnazani, left Baghdad for Iraqi Kurdistan in 1999 after military dictator Saddam Hussein’s government became suspicious of his popularity. Kasnazani’s sons are active in politics, running a political party and a national newspaper which tries to walk a fine line through the country’s sectarian minefield.

Islamist radicals among the insurgency frown on Sufism as emotional superstition. While deadly attacks on the order have been rare, 10 people died in a suicide attack on a Kasnazani gathering in Balad, north of Baghdad, in June.

“The Islamist extremists like Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunna and the Wahhabis are against Sufism, and since Kasnazani is the main order they are against us,” said Abdel-Salam al-Hadithi, spokesman of the Central Council for Sufi Orders in Baghdad.—Reuters

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Ten followers of the mystic Islamic Sufi movement were killed last night in a suicide bombing in a remote village north of Baghdad.

And on Friday, four Iraqis, including an army Brigadier, are reported to have been killed as government security forces and the US military continued their operations to clear insurgents from Baghdad.

According to a US military briefing, the crowd of Sufi worshippers was attacked by a suicide car bomber in the village of Saud, near the town of Balad, about 425 miles north of Baghdad, late last night. The explosion completed a bloody day in which nearly 50 people were killed in shootings and bombings across the country.

Sufi mystics are a target of Islamic extremists, who dispute their interpretation of the Koran. Twelve people were also injured in the explosion.

Ahmed Hamid, a Sufi witness told the Associated Press: "I was among 50 people inside the tekiya (Sufi gathering place) practicing our rites when the building was hit by a big explosion. Then, there was chaos everywhere and human flesh scattered all over the place."

The bombing brought Thursday's death toll to 49, of whom more than 30 were killed in four suicide bombings in the north of Iraq. A Shia cleric was also shot in the southern city of Basra.

On Friday, gunmen killed Brigadier Sabah Qara Alton, a Turkman member of the Kirkuk City Council, after he left a mosque in the northern city. Elsewhere across the country, two Iraqis, including a child, died when their car collided with a U.S military Bradley fighting vehicle. Today's casualties bring the number of people killed, including US forces, to more than 825 since Iraq's new Shia-led government was announced on April 28.

Despite the widespread violence, the Iraqi Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, claimed on Thursday that "Operation Lightning", the largest offensive launched by the Iraqi government since the fall of Saddam Hussein two years ago, was achieving success.

According to the Interior Minister, the operation, which involves 40,000 soldiers and police, has killed 28 militants and captured more than 700 since it was launched last week. Before the operation began, authorities controlled just eight of Baghdad's 23 entrances.

And there was optimism today for the life of Australian hostage, Douglas Wood, who was kidnapped at the end of April.

Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly, Australia's top cleric, who has been in Baghdad trying to secure the freedom of the 63-year-old engineer told the AP: "We hope, God willing, that within the next few hours to hear news about the hostage’s (imminent) release."

On May 1, a group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq issued a DVD of Mr Wood and demanded the withdrawal of Australia's 1,400 troops from Iraq.

[Old News] Sufi Muslims cannot avoid savagery in IraqEdward Wong, New York Times

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Baghdad , Iraq -- As the twilight ritual of the Sufi Muslims reached its crescendo, the five drummers pounded harder and quicker, inspiring the men standing in a circle to spin their heads ever more rapidly, their hip-length hair twirling through the air.

The sun dipped low beyond the shrine's inner courtyard, and the chanting rose in volume.

"God, you are the only surviving one, the only everlasting," the dozen men said in unison, their eyes closed, more than a hundred spectators surrounding them at this shrine in western Baghdad. "The oneness, the oneness."

Sufism, generally considered a branch of Sunni Islam, is divided into orders or brotherhoods, the most famous being that of the Mevlevi, or whirling dervishes. Sufis seek, through dance, music, chanting and other intensely physical rituals, to transcend worldly existence and perceive the face of the divine. Their mysticism has contributed to their pacific reputation.

But in Iraq, no one is ever far removed from war. In a sign of the widening and increasingly complex rifts in Iraqi society, Sufis have suddenly found themselves the targets of attacks. Many Iraqis believe those responsible are probably fundamentalist Sunnis who view the Sufis as apostates, just one step removed from the Shiites.

Sheikh Ali al-Faiz, a senior official at this Sufi shrine, or takia, rattled off a list of recent assaults: The leader of a takia in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi was abducted and killed in mid-August; a bomb exploded in a takia in Kirkuk earlier this year; gunmen beat Sufi worshipers at a mosque in Ramadi in January; a bomb exploded in the kitchen of a takia in Ramadi last September ,and a bomb in April 2004 destroyed an entire takia in the same city.

The early attacks were frightening, but until this spring there had been few Sufi deaths. Then, on June 2, a suicide bomber rammed a minivan packed with explosives into a takia outside the town of Balad, 40 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 12.

The attack took place in the middle of a ritual. The minivan hurtled through the front gate, then exploded when people ran toward it, said a neighboring farmer who gave his name as Abu Zakaria. "I hurried there with my brothers in my car," he said. "It was a mess of bodies. I carried bodies to the car without knowing whether they were dead or alive."

Five days later, at a gathering of mourners in an assembly hall fashioned from reeds in the village of Mazaree, the head of the takia, Sheikh Idris Aiyash, lamented the loss of his father and three brothers. "If we keep on like this, we might really face civil war," he said.

Some Sufi groups in Iraq have built up militias and are bracing for more violence.

At the recent twilight ceremony here, Kalashnikov-wielding guards watched from a rooftop. "It's really chaotic now in our society, because the killer doesn't know the people he's killing, and those killed don't know why they've been killed," al-Faiz said. "The entire community is threatened, including us."

There are no accurate estimates of the number of Sufis in Iraq, though the biggest orders are in Baghdad and Kurdish Iraqi. Al-Faiz said there were dozens of takias in the capital alone and more than 100 across the country before the war. That number may have dropped by as much as a third since the U. S. invasion, he said.

The guerrilla war has hindered the flow of pilgrims to the Abdul-Qadir al- Gailani Mosque in central Baghdad, one of the world's most important Sufi shrines. Stalls selling religious souvenirs outside stood largely neglected one recent afternoon. Sheikh Mahmoud al-Esawi, the imam of the mosque, said Sufi visitors from far-flung places like India, Pakistan and Europe had stopped coming.

Many takias across the capital have opted to hold their ceremonies in the late afternoon, so worshipers can get home before sundown. "The lack of security has created many negatives in our society," al-Esawi said. "Some groups dislike the takias and their rituals."

Many Iraqis say the attack outside Balad was probably carried out by Sunni Arabs of the fundamentalist Salafi sect, which counts Osama bin Laden and the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi among its adherents. If so, it might be an indication that the most hard-line Sunnis will increasingly turn on other Sunnis as sectarian divides widen.

But the bombing may have had its roots in a tangled web of religion and politics. The takia belonged to the Kasnazani order, which has emerged as the most political and possibly the largest Sufi group in the country. Its wealthy Kurdish founder, Sheikh Muhammad Abdul-Kareem al-Kasnazani, has made many enemies. Martin van Bruinessen, a professor of Islamic studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said that in the 1970s and early '80s, al- Kasnazani, with the backing of Saddam Hussein, led a militia against the Kurdish forces of Jalal Talabani, who is now Iraq's president.

Al-Kasnazani then established himself in Arab Iraq, increasing his following and acting as a middleman for Hussein's oil sales. He became close friends with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, now Hussein's most-wanted former aide.

But the sheikh had a falling-out with Hussein shortly before the U.S. invasion. In a measure of his lasting power, he was able to flee to the Kurdish capital of Sulaimaniya, where he now lives under Talabani's protection. From there, the sheikh almost certainly helped the United States plan for the invasion of Iraq, said Bruinessen, who suspects that al-Kasnazani was a valuable informant whom CIA officers called "the pope."

With the motives for the devastating attack in Mazaree unclear, Sufi groups are still reaching out and performing their ceremonies for non-Sufis, sometimes for money but usually with the intent that the spectators may see God. Sufi groups in Iraq have even performed at U.S. military bases.

Before the evening of dancing and chanting began at the takia in western Baghdad, which belongs to the Kasnazani order, an elder in gray robes and a turban plunged a foot-long dagger resembling a barbecue skewer through the lower jaw of a teenage boy sitting on the shrine's carpeted floor. He did the same to the left breast of a man who had stripped off his shirt. The man and the boy just stared ahead, apparently not feeling any pain, proud to demonstrate the strength of their faith to two American visitors.

Ali Unsal pulled the table closer to his chair and opened the Koran, Islam's holy book. His friends, gathered in his simply furnished Fairfax living room, grew quiet, and their weekly Islamic study session began.

Unsal's reading from the book was followed by a discussion about religious sincerity. The three women and eight men then talked about the spiritual benefits of fasting to prepare for Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that begins tonight when the new, very thin crescent moon appears.

For these young professionals, all immigrants from Turkey, the regular gatherings are enriching. "It's kind of like brainstorming," said Zehra Turan, 34, of Fairfax City, a mother of two who is studying for her medical board exams. "Ten minds are looking from maybe 10 windows on the same subject. So we can see more sides. . . . It helps me feel more strongly about my faith."

Such sessions are common among Turkish Muslims who -- like the Fairfax group -- embrace the ideas of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish mystic and scholar who teaches a moderate, outward-looking brand of Islam.

Gulen, 64, has been living in the United States for the past six years. A reclusive figure, he shuns interviews and television appearances. But in recent years, his outlook, which stresses modern life and Islamic spirituality, has gained a growing number of supporters in Turkey and among the Washington area's estimated 20,000 Turks.

He presents "a modern interpretation of Islam compatible with science, democracy and freedom," said Hasan Ali Yurtsever, 38, a research scholar in Georgetown University's mathematics department and a member of the study group.

"After 9/11, a lot of groups said they are moderate and changed their rhetoric," said Zeyno Baran, director of International Security and Energy Programs at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank. "But the Gulen movement for the last 30 to 40 years has been saying the same thing. They have not changed their language because they want to be okay now."

Gulen's thought is heavily influenced by Sufism, the ancient mystical sect of Islam that emphasizes a personal religious experience of God as divine love.

In particular, the Gulen movement reveres the 13th century Sufi mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi, who lived in Turkey. And Gulen serves as honorary chairman of the Rumi Forum, a Washington area group that promotes interfaith activities and such cultural events as recent performances in Washington and Norfolk of the Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul.

Whirling dance is a form of prayer for some Sufis. But nowadays, it is more a cultural expression of Sufi Islam, said Yurtsever, the forum's president.

In Turkey, the Gulen movement is a presence in hundreds of schools that follow a rigorous secular curriculum heavily weighted toward science. Religious instruction follows a government-approved syllabus or is nonexistent. Gulen followers in Turkey also run the daily newspaper Zaman, an Islamic-oriented television channel, radio stations and an Islamic bank.

Though nonpolitical, the movement is controversial in some Turkish quarters. Radical Islamists revile it, saying it is too open to Western ideas and other faiths, and many military officials and secular-oriented intellectuals worry that Gulen and his devotees secretly want to establish an Islamic state in Turkey.

Gulen has faced criminal charges several times of seeking to overthrow Turkey's established secular political order. The latest charges against him, made in 1999, were nullified after recent legal reforms there, according to Turkey scholars, who say Gulen lives in the United States -- in Pennsylvania and New Jersey -- so he can be treated for a heart condition.

At Unsal's home in Fairfax, the guests came casually dressed and, following Turkish custom, left their shoes inside, at the front door.

The men and women mingled, and only one of the women wore a head scarf. The group included two businessmen, a schoolteacher and a historian. Gulen had written the essay they discussed on "Sincerity or Purity of Intention."

"Sincerity starts with the heart and then comes to your mouth and deeds," said Unsal, 33, who holds graduate degrees in theology and is publicity manager for the McLean-based American Turkish Friendship Association.

He urged his fellow Muslims "not to show off" and to keep their good works between themselves and God.

"Only God knows if you are sincere. There is no way to measure sincerity," added Ali Aslan, 38, Washington correspondent for Zaman.

"There is no sincere-o-meter," Yurtsever quipped, making everyone laugh.

With the formal discussion over, the group shared Turkish food and conversation.

Like others at the session, McLean resident Fatih Guner, 36, a bathroom-tile manufacturer, said he is eager for U.S residents to learn about Turkish Islam because of its tolerance.

"Gulen encourages Muslims to go to the West and show them what Islam is," said Aslan. "We are trying to be good role models."

Everyone in the group was looking forward to Ramadan.

Turan, who has been in the United States nine years, said she will decorate her home for Ramadan and have her children, ages 8 and 6, practice fasting for a few hours on weekends. She also will have them watch Turkish satellite television channels so they can see how Ramadan is celebrated in her native country.

"I'll try more to have them understand Ramadan as I understand it at home," she said.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Local Muslim Abdu Raheman has confirmed to Forum 18 News Service that the government of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of China's north-western Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region banned the Sala movement – a local Sufi Muslim order - in August and that an unknown number of its followers have been arrested.

Forum 18 News Service has been unable to find out why the government of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of China's north-western Xinjiang Region banned the Sala Sufi Muslim order as a "dangerous" group in August. "I'm not prepared to voice an opinion on whether or not this order is harmful," a professor from Beijing's Institute of Nationalities told Forum 18. But she denied that if any practitioners had been arrested it was for their religious beliefs. The German-based World Uyghur Congress says 179 people have been held. Local Muslim Abdu Raheman told Forum 18 that the practitioners were seized by the security services. "There was no court case against them, so no-one knows how long they will spend behind bars." He views the moves – which also include closures of mosques and seizures of religious literature - as part of a campaign against local Huis, ethnic Chinese Muslims. "The religious practices of the Huis bring out the international nature of Islam, and that aggravates the authorities."Local Muslim Abdu Raheman has confirmed to Forum 18 News Service that the government of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of China's north-western Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region banned the Sala movement – a local Sufi Muslim order - in August and that an unknown number of its followers have been arrested. "It wasn't the police who arrested them, but the security services," he told Forum 18 on 21 September in Ghulja (Yining in Chinese), the capital of the prefecture which lies close to the border with Kazakhstan. "There was no court case against them, so no-one knows how long they will spend behind bars." He said that virtually all of those arrested were Huis, ethnic Chinese Muslims who make up about eight per cent of the prefecture's population.

The local paper, the Yili Daily, reported last month that high-ranking prefectural officials held a special work conference on the Sala "threat" on 17 August. Zhang Yun, who is in charge of supervising the prefecture's religious affairs, warned government and communist party officials of the "dangerous" nature of Sala and said it had be to banned along with other illegal religions. Sala leaders were accused of "cheating and deceiving the masses, and inciting them to worship their religious leaders", and of pressuring followers to make donations to the organisation. Officials also accused its leaders of encouraging "trans-provincial worship" and "threatening social stability". However, official publications made no mention of any arrests. The German-based World Uyghur Congress later reported that 179 practitioners had been arrested.

Forum 18 was unable to find out why state officials had banned the Sala order. "Sala is a Sufi order that came to China from Central Asia," Ding Hong, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Nationalities, told Forum 18 from the capital on 23 September. "I'm not prepared to voice an opinion on whether or not this order is harmful. But I am sure that if some member of the order has been arrested, it was not for their religious beliefs."

"I'm sorry, but I am too busy to answer your questions," Dimu La Ti, rector at the Humanities College in the regional capital Urumqi [Ürümqi], told Forum 18 on 24 September. Forum 18 also telephoned the Beijing Institute of Social Issues the same day, but was told to send a formal written query and to give a detailed description of Forum 18 News Service's activities.

According to Chinese official sources, Sala was founded in the early 20th century in Qinghai province south-east of Xinjiang and has thousands of adherents, primarily from the Muslim ethnic Hui and Salar communities in Qinghai province, as well as in neighbouring Gansu province.

"Sala is a Sufi brotherhood which has similar rituals to those of the Sufi Qadiriyya brotherhood," Abdu Raheman, the owner of Ghulja's largest honey-producing company, told Forum 18. He stressed that virtually all the followers of Sala in the Ili-Kazakh autonomous prefecture are, like him, ethnic Huis.

Raheman believes the authorities are restricting the rights of Muslims of all ethnic background but are particularly harsh with the Huis. "The authorities want to suggest that Islam is the national religion of Turkish-speaking people who live in China – the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz," he claimed. "The only thing distinguishing the Huis from other Chinese is their faith. The religious practices of the Huis bring out the international nature of Islam, and that aggravates the authorities."

He also confirmed that the authorities have launched a campaign to track down unauthorised religious literature. "The security services are searching for unauthorised religious books in Islamic bookshops and in private homes," he reported. "I personally know four Huis who have been arrested because they were found to have ancient religious books in Uyghur."

Abdu Raheman reports that the authorities have closed at least two Hui mosques in the past three months – one in the village of Tekes 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Ghulja and another in the village of Huocheng 100 kilometres (62 miles) north-west of Ghulja. The first mosque was closed because three Chinese had converted to Islam, he said, while the second was closed because the authorities felt the mosque building was too large (for earlier mosque closures in the area see F18News 4 April 2005 ).

Abdu Raheman claims that there is far less provision for Muslims' rights in Xinjiang than in the central parts of the country, which are more economically and socially developed. "In Henan province, children can attend Arabic-language schools which operate quite legally, but the Xinjiang authorities have ordered that pupils from the autonomous region be taken out of the school."

Raheman believes the authorities are unhappy with his critical comments and are trying to put indirect pressure on him. "Just recently, the authorities ended a rental contract for a cottage, for which I had a 50-year agreement. As a result, my family has had to move elsewhere."

The government tightly controls the practice of religion in Xinjiang, particularly among ethnic Uyghurs, who now make up some 42 per cent of the regional population.

In addition to the most recent arrests among the Sala practitioners, elsewhere in Xinjiang the authorities arrested a Uyghur religious instructor, Aminan Momixi, and 37 of her students aged between 7 and 20 after bursting into her home on 1 August, the World Uyghur Congress reported. Police accused her of "illegally possessing religious materials and subversive historical information". The Uyghur Human Rights Project reported that police in central Xinjiang detained three Uyghurs on 20 July for possession of the Mishkat-ul Misabih, a religious text describing the life and work of the Muslim prophet Muhammed

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